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How The Bloody Chamber and Dracula presents female sexuality NEA (FULL MARKS 50/50)
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Full marks NEA on female sexuality in Dracula and The Bloody Chambers.
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Rukhsar Yazmin final draftCompare and contrast the ways in which Angela Carter’s ‘The Bloody Chamber’ and Bram Stroker’s
‘Dracula’ presents female sexuality.
Bram Stoker’s Gothic novel ‘Dracula’ and Angela Carter’s collection of stories ‘The Bloody Chamber’
were written almost 100 years apart, with Stroker’s ‘Dracula’ paving the way for popular gothic and
vampire literary horrors and Carter’s ‘The Bloody Chamber’ drawing on contemporary feminist
issues in order to create a subversive collection of fairy tales transformed. Dracula details the
conflict created when a diabolical and charismatic vampire travels to England, threatening the sturdy
foundations that the society holds, whilst The Bloody Chamber focuses on numerous female
heroines with Carter presenting traditional fairy tales manipulated into a fantastical and violently
sexual series of stories exposing the true experiences of these women. Female sexuality is seen to be
a key theme within both texts, the expected norms of women within each text being both
conformed to, but also revolted against.
Stoker’s use of the Gothic genre lends itself to an exploration of female sexuality within a tale of
horror and monstrous beings. Those monstrous beings are often women. Typical to even the earliest
Gothic novel, female sexuality is repressed beneath a mandate of purity and virtue, and is used as a
tool for entrapment, as any woman who expresses her sexuality is accountable for the ensuing of
evil. This is evident in the transformation of Lucy Westenra, a young, beautiful and desired female
character, who is also a key symbol of female sexuality within the play. Lucy is initially described as
the essence of virtue, possessing a “face of unequalled sweetness and purity”. However, the
insinuation of her susceptibility to the seduction of Dracula ultimately leads to her downfall, as when
bitten and turned into a vampire, she transforms into a sensual and amoral femme fatale. The
supernatural and monstrous nature of Lucy is seen to coincide with the typical Gothic aesthetic as it
is distinguished that her hair is now ‘dark’, her “sweetness…turned to adamantine, heartless cruelty,
and purity to voluptuous wantonness”. The juxtaposition conveys the parallels of society’s
expectations, as purity and obedience is represented through light and beauty, but promiscuity and
sexual agency is represented through darkness and evil. Stroker presents that amorality and sin is
associated with feminine sexuality and eroticism, thus condemning the sexual desires of women.
This is evident in the highly disturbing imagery of Lucy, now the ‘un-dead’, throwing a child, whom
she was previously cradling within her arms, onto the ground. The image of Lucy and a child mirrors
the typical expectation of a mother- child relationship, one that is usually regarded as being
nurturing and natural but has now been horrifically destabilised by Lucy, who is presented as a
symbolic mother, harming the child she would naturally have protected. Evidently, Lucy’s atrocious
transformation is used within the Gothic plot in order to foretell the consequences faced if female
sexuality is not contained within the structure of patriarchy.
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